The Conquest of the Commena Cluster
The Conquest of the Commena Cluster was a campaign fought at the beginning of the Icarion Insurrection, between Insurrectionist forces led by the Harbingers and Eagle Warriors, and various Loyalist garrisons. It is often considered to be the first major action in the Wars of Expansion. On the Storm's Edge The closest fortresses of the Xth Legion to the Stormlord’s advance lay in the Commena Cluster, on the eastern edge of the Tayargund Reaches. Fragmentary records suggest that they were formerly part of an empire built on knowledge and psychic potential - a history seemingly shared with Terathalion and a handful of other worlds. The latter factor ensured that the Black Fleets of the Silent Sisterhood regularly trawled the region to prevent the proliferation of unsanctioned psykers. Indeed, a garrison of the null-warriors was maintained within the Fire Keepers’ fortress on Commena Prime. Close to the verge of the Maelstrom, the Cluster was also wracked by Warp phenomena emanating from the shadowed and quarantined Prospero system. As a consequence astropathic transmissions periodically struggled to reach it, and the frantic missives from Terra were fragmentary. Enough emerged to paint a troubling picture indeed, though the politicians and soldiers who governed the Cluster could glean little of the state of play around them. Castellan Kerun Sigurd favoured a cautious approach, keeping close the forces available to him. In the main he was obeyed, but fear bred like a contagion in the hearts of mortal men, and some whispered that resisting the Stormlord would achieve nothing. When the source of their fears first arrived, they came as ships clad in dark green and bone white: a fleet of the traitorous XIIIth Legion. The Eight Chapter of the Eagle Warriors struck from an obscure Warp route long thought to have been unnavigable. For this reason it had never been more than lightly defended, and the ships stationed there were obliterated within an hour of the fleet’s arrival. From here, Chapter Master Huetic Xiutel moved against his true target; the astropathic relay at Strebek. With the seizure of the installation and its personnel, the flow of news and orders from the Commena government ceased. Instead a flow of ultimatums from Xiutel issued throughout the region, battering against the resolve of military personnel and civilians alike. Realising that a score of worlds and outposts at the Cluster’s edge had gone quiet, Sigurd was assailed with demands from those around him that the Strebek relay must be retaken. With the Eagle Warriors reportedly on the move and presumably having left only a handful of companies and divisions of mortal soldiers to hold their conquest, the advocates saw an opportunity. Sigurd was sceptical, but in the military councils of Commena the “riposte” party prevailed. A fleet was marshalled and dispatched, only to be confronted by a Mechanicum fleet bearing the sigil of Akira. The traitorous magi of that world wasted no time in demolishing the Loyalists, their superior weaponry sundering the defenders' ships and snuffing out the power aboard others. By the time the disaster became known, the Insurrectionists were sweeping like wildfire across the Cluster, overrunning the Army garrisons on the Cluster’s border worlds and leaving the surviving populations mired in disorder, fearfully awaiting their new rulers. In truth these were already at large in the Cluster; the first portion of the fleet Icarion had been mustering at Madrigal. Raiden Athrawes, the Primarch’s equerry, first made his presence known with the conquest of Vothkant, a lightning offensive that struck uncomfortably close to the Commena System itself before turning to threaten the lynchpin system of Uelaquan. News came of other blows. On Uelequan itself a menials’ uprising had seen the entire ruling elite slain and hung from their towers. In the Pasegur system two Black Ships had been intercepted and seized by taghmata from Estaban III, the unsanctioned psykers in their holds vanishing along with the vessels. A fleet moving to reinforce Utap found a world ravaged and stripped of its youth, and returning to apparent safety, they were themselves set upon and destroyed by an unidentified force. Storm and Sword As the Eagle Warriors plied their marauders’ trade across the Cluster and unrest continued to flare up, Castellan Sigurd drew up his forces on and around Commena Prime. He had an impressive force at his command, some ten thousand who garrisoned the world along with its militia, who numbered in the tens of millions, and one hundred thousand soldiers drawn from the Franc Voltiguers and set to the defence of the capital, Rechul Hive. The defenders’ strength was doubled again by the presence of several Army forces of varying sizes which had been redirected to Commena and assigned variously to the prime world’s hives, Commena Secundus’ two cities and the watch station on the outermost planet. All of these metroplexes were placed under martial law, with curfews and traffic limits rigidly enforced by the Arbitrators and soldiery. For two weeks the system’s inhabitants maintained what normality they could, despite the trickle of chilling reports as Athrawes’ forces split up to attack a further string of isolated systems. Then, shortly after midnight in Rechul, the klaxons began to blare that a fleet had approached from the southern Warp terminus and begun clearing the fields of orbital mines at the system’s edge. Squadrons of Army ships were deployed to halt and destroy the invaders, now identified as the Harbingers and the Akiran Mechanicum. Hard-fought as the battle would be, it seemed to the defenders that the enemy had played their hand too soon, committing when only a part of their assets were available. The first squadrons, belonging to the Naskine Ferrophracts and the venerable G6 Division Kill, engaged the Harbingers an hour after the Insurrectionists cleared a path through the minefields. Reinforcements were close behind them, ready to close the trap. In the strategium spire of Rechul, reports arrived that swayed many in the room from cautious optimism to latent triumph. Athrawes' flagship, the Cutter of Delusions, led the Ist Legion fleet. The Ninth Sentinel was here, but he had overplayed his hand. Fortune smiled upon the defenders, offering them the chance to slay one of the Stormlord’s foremost lieutenants. The Naskine and G6K ships halted, the first line of defence on which the Insurrectionists would break themselves, and from their guns came thickets of torpedoes and las-fire, blazing against the void shields of their foes. Soon the massive guns on Commena Extremis would be trained on the invaders too, and no amount of shielding would be enough to save Athrawes and his fleet, no matter the esoteric gifts of Akira or the Ist Legion’s shipmastery. And then, even as the commanders in the Rechul strategium issued orders, fresh alerts flared up. Moreover they flared up within the system, indicating ships had emerged from the western terminus and bypassed the perimeter defences, undetected until they passed the engaged squadrons. Even as ships were diverted to engage them and frantic missives sent to Extremis, bursts of Warp-light erupted among the embattled formations of the Ferrophracts and G6K Division. Vortex torpedoes, their arcs calculated with a precision that spoke to absurd levels of planning, had been loosed hours before the new fleet’s presence was known. Ships caught in their vicinity were stricken, great portions of their structures excised, leaving their comrades in disorder as the Harbingers pounced. The Claws of the Thirteenth The second fleet were the Eagle Warriors; Xiutel again exploiting his mysterious ability to navigate shadowed and treacherous Warp channels to deadly effect. Though all would become horribly clear in time, the defenders of Commena were at a loss to explain his sudden appearance, let alone how it had been coordinated so closely with the Harbingers’ gambit. Armed with codes pillaged from captured vessels in other systems, Xiutel’s ships did not trigger any response from automated defences or systems, and that proved just as true of those on Commena Extremis as it had of the outer rings. Below, tech-priests frantically set about two tasks; some altering the codes and disseminating them to the fleet, while others tried to calculate the trajectory from which the Eagle Warriors were already approaching. The time they had proved insufficient. The turbolasers and plasma annihilators on the little planet’s surface lit up near space with strobing spears of light and gouts of star-matter. The Eagle Warriors could not hope to evade it all, their shields fizzing and straining under the onslaught. Several escorts died, some leaving nothing but a spray of molten metal and atomic fire, others fracturing messily as torpedos smashed into them. The strike cruiser that had once been the Brightlance of the XIIth Legion had its brief second life ended when a plasma annihilator struck it head-on, leaving it to tumble away with its prow stripped away and the spires peeled from its back. But then the rest of Xiutel's ships, closing on the command sector, were near enough to answer. Xiutel was adept in shock-attack planetfall operations, and the Illumination's Toll, his Avenger-class Grand Cruiser, was optimised for such warfare. Missiles as large as hab-blocks bathed the northern hemisphere’s city-sprawl in fire. The light of overloaded void shields outshone the stars and explosions until the dust of broken towers blotted out all illumination. Anyone exposed was suffocated or killed by the heat. Next came the howls of reality splitting open - not from teleportation technology, but stranger, arcane methods which defied the teleport jammers installed by the Fire Keepers. Eagle Warriors stepped through, five full companies which then converged on the subterranean control nexus. In their way stood the land forces of G6K Division and the Ferrophracts, overseen by the Fire Keepers and commanded by Captain Isran Giora. Two thousand Astartes guarded the control nexus here, and they had seen to it that the complex was thick with automated and remotely controlled turrets at all levels. The concussive thunder of bolter fire and the whoosh of flamer units joined the cacophony, frustrating the Eagle Warriors’ efforts to enter. Their first attempt blunted, the Eagle Warriors fell back as their second wave entered the fray. It was far larger than the strike force which had gone before, comprising a great many mortal soldiers as well as several companies of the Eighth Chapter. Bulk landers sank into the ash clouds, while around them Storm Eagles and Thunderhawks wheeled in predatory flocks. While this soup of ash and debris served to mask them from Loyalist auspex, it took a toll of its own as several landers had their intakes overwhelmed, plummeting abruptly to ground with devastating results. Others continued to fall victim to gun emplacements, for Giora had ordered the gunners to keep firing in broad sweep patterns for the best odds of striking enemy craft. The troops who made it to the surface had to contend with the soldiers of G6 Kill Division, who had emerged from bunkers in the tens of thousands. Their distinctive greatcoats and sealed armour allowed them to fight effectively despite the purgatorial conditions, and battle raged through the outskirts of Extremis’ cities. The Eagle Warriors had directed their mortal units - perhaps 15,000 were their Calpuolla thrall-soldiers, but there were seemingly twice as many whose livery did not match any in Imperial catalogues at the time - to form up and move out immediately, overwhelming the defenders by sheer weight of numbers and fire. It was an attack lacking in any kind of subtlety and appalling in the losses it incurred, yet on the invaders came. Some of them were clearly prisoners, collared with explosives and driven out of their landers with whips and taser prods, but many seemed to come on and die out of their own volition. Even the hardened men of G6K Division were shaken, and they were forced into a fighting retreat as the Insurrectionists piled on in defiance of all tactical sense. Control of the planet’s defence grid was slipping, three sectors infested with enemy soldiers. Fire's Toll In the control sanctum, Giaros spoke a single sentence: “Give the conqueror his prize of dust.” Across the city, officers heard the words and acted accordingly. First, ammunition stashes went up, showering the invaders with shrapnel and masonry. Gun towers came crashing down, enough to bury hundreds but still giving the illusion of mere by-products of battle. The Insurrectionist hordes came on in their frenzies of fear or fanaticism, and among them were the Eagle Warriors, to whom such things were merely an irritant. Land Raiders and Rhinos battered their way through the remains of walls and over heaps of slag and bodies. And yet Giaros, faced with this prospect, was pleased, and he gave the signal for a second wave of destruction. The Fire Keepers’ fortification of Commena Extremis went far beyond raising walls and designing kill-zones; they had planned for its fall. Demolition charges went up in rippling sequence across the bases of blocks, turning walls into floods of ferrocrete that subsumed men and tanks. Among the dull grey waves were breakers that glowed molten, for among the mundane explosives the Fire Keepers had placed melta charges which sent molten rock spilling over their foes. Giaro’s gambit swallowed up attackers in their thousands, leaving the remaining advance units cut off from aid, and this volcanic surge was the herald of the Fire Keepers. Out of the inferno they came, rallying the platoons of G6K to their side. Assault marines appeared from the smog and came down among knots of enemy soldiers. Those that stood against them died by bolt pistol, flamer and chainblade, the rest cut down with massed rifle fire or the pinpoint shots of Xth Legion tactical squads. But the Fire Keepers saved their greatest fury for when the Eagle Warriors, traitors and kinslayers, renewed their assault on the city. On the host of green and bone-white came, expending the last of their bullet-soak hordes to cross the slag-heaps. Within the tangle of spires and causeways, Space Marine fought Space Marine. Four hours passed and still the Eagle Warriors could not advance, stymied by the Fire Keepers’ consummate use of the terrain. Under Giaros’ direction, every junction became a kill-zone, every unit a cog in his machine. Commena Extremis remained in Loyalist hands, its vast gun emplacements still largely intact. Xiutel's ships were forced to return to low orbit, suffering the attentions of those batteries as they released a second wave of gunships and landers. This landing was again larger than before, and they paid a lighter toll than those who had preceded them, for Giaros’ ploy had sacrificed a great many defence platforms. Xiutel himself made planetfall, ensconced in a hulking Mastodon transport at the heart of the main Insurrectionist column. The Eagle Warriors set the full power of their tank companies to the operation, and towering above them were the Titans of the Legio Fureans, whom the Traitors had been loath to risk before this point in the battle. Now spires were felled by Insurrectionist guns rather than Loyalist guile, and Giaros knew that his forces would not prevail this time. The Fire Keepers and Army made a valiant stand, gradually falling back and meting out a measure of vengeance for every metre their surrendered. The legendary forgecraft of the Xth Legion was a telling factor, even against the blades and guns of their cousins, and each warrior was the veteran of many a claustrophobic boarding-siege or grinding defence of a fortress. Their power blades glimmered like the brightest silver and parted ceramite as if it was mere flak armour. They were being ground down, but for every Fire Keeper who fell, at least two Eagle Warriors were cast down. Even the Titans were made to pay, ambushed at points by dozens of tanks which succeeded in bringing down a Warhound and a Reaver, as well as seriously damaging six more. Finally the last of the garrison died, Giaros himself falling in combat against a squad of clawed Terminators, and Xiutel fought his way into the control nexus. However, he did not do so without an injury of his own, for a confrontation with one of Giaros’ Chaplains had left his right arm shattered. More importantly, assets intended for the conquest of the inner worlds had been depleted and delayed. Now there was hope that the defenders of Commena could hold out until salvation came from their allies at the Cluster’s edge. There were other Loyalist fleets, close enough to intervene. Furthermore, despite the tumult in the Warp, some missives had reached the Commena system, and they spoke of a great muster taking place in the Ysta System. Alas, not only Loyalist ears had heard those words, and the invaders were quite willing to pay in blood for a rapid conquest. The Knives Unsheathed Sigurd had drawn his ships into a tight, interlocked formation which left no chance for Athrawes to approach unmolested. Defence monitors, while too slow to operate in open space, were perfectly suited to this kind of war, arrayed among the myriad cruisers and battleships. However, none of the vessels he commanded could rival the power of the Akiran Ark Mechanicum Unequivocal which, with five battleships arrayed around it so close that their void shields overlapped, formed a monstrous battering ram behind which the rest of the fleet sheltered. Sigurd, an expert in siege warfare, would no doubt have noted the parallels with archaic tactics first used by Mankind eons ago. Unbeknownst to the Castellan, another, even more ancient method was in play - the knife in the back. In his long years of preparation, Icarion had cultivated allies who were either already stationed within the Cluster or placed there through subtle manipulation. Most had not yet declared their new allegiance openly, instead feigning flight when the Insurrectionist Legions launched the offensive. Thus they fell back to other systems and were welcomed into their lines of defence, and most of all they flocked to Commena Prime. In truth, the scars on their hulls had been inflicted by betrayed Loyalists. Regiments too had been swayed, and they awaited the signal on the ground. A vox-cast from the advancing Ist Legion ships - sent ahead of the planned time, for events had forced Athrawes’s hand - set in motion an avalanche of betrayals. Men, tanks and ships of all sizes turned their guns upon those who thought them friends, and anarchy was the result. The interlocking web of fire patterns so carefully orchestrated by Sigurd fractured, ships dying or forced to pivot and answer their betrayers. Into the cracks poured the Harbingers and the Akiran fleet. Where they advanced, no ships could hold. Several formations were pried apart with an ease that was all the more sinister for the elegance with which the Ist Legion ships moved, sweeping through the battle in graceful arcs. The Akiran ships, meanwhile, cleared their paths with sheer force, great banks of guns blazing away. Meanwhile, Magos Reductor completed the rites of activation for some of the Mechanicum’s most enigmatic and deadliest weapons, and lightning-phage, volkite implosion spheres and scathe-lash warheads split the darkness. Even hardened captains recoiled at the hideous bursts of light and fire and the devastation they brought. Dozens of ships fled, forsaking all honour to survive. The Insurrectionists let them go, directing all their fire at those who still gave battle. Every vessel that escaped would carry a tale of unstoppable assault to their fellows. The outer lines of defending ships were disintegrating, split apart by their attackers so that ships could be picked off. All the while Athrawes’ voice, carried across the vox on a loop, proclaiming the Loyalists’ doom. They were outmatched and harbouring still more traitors, sworn to the Stormlord’s banner. Their cause was as bereft of hope as it was of value, selling their lives for an uncaring tyrant. The same fate might be said to have befallen many of the traitors themselves, for Athrawes expended his allies ruthlessly to ensure his success. Declaring themselves too early to be sure of Space Marine support, they suffered by Loyalist retaliation soon, enough, and several were wiped out before the Harbingers reached orbit. Nonetheless, their work was thorough, having been planned well in advance by Athrawes and Ikoru Amakune, Master of the Forge and an expert siege engineer. Some of the turncoats below had been instructed to simply cause havoc, but others had a particular role to carry out. At Rechul Spaceport, the Kerawan Skylances scrambled their craft and carpet-bombed great swathes of the surrounding airfields before levelling the surrounding buildings for a kilometre around the huge complex. This paved the way not merely for the Harbingers, but for the massive transports of the Rakurai and other giants which plunged into the atmosphere. The latter ships were huge cylinders, instantly recognisable as Titan-carriers. Upon landing, they opened to reveal two full war maniples of the Legio Telesto, flanked by the Knights of House Rakham. Sigurd had seen the danger, and Army tanks converged on the spaceport in their thousands, but against a force like this they were powerless. The colossal Arc Cannons of Telesto crackled into life, the anger of mythical gods made real by Man’s genius and unleashed upon the very heart of the Commena Cluster. The Stolen Dawn As on Extremis, the fighting threw up such volumes of dust and smoke that the darkness of night kept its hold over Rechul. Titan-war left little standing when it raged, and whole spires were consumed along with anything that stood between the lines of Telesto and the Legio Destructor maniples stationed at Rechul. The elder Legio were one of the most powerful in the Imperium, despite their long service in the Crusade. Closely matched, the two inflicted grave losses upon one another until more landers brought five Ordinati Minoris to the surface. Flanked by a host of Mechanicum tanks, these tipped the balance against the Loyalist Titans. The Legio Destructor god-engines were destroyed so thoroughly that only four Titans were even identifiable after the battle, let alone salvageable. Of lesser machines, there was nothing but dust. A great waste had been created by the advance of Telesto, and the Harbingers and their allies had used it as a vast landing ground, descending in vast numbers and fanning out to storm the city. When they reached bulwarks they could not afford to simply level, siege-automata and penal troopers were sent ahead in forlorn hopes. Rakurai and Skitarii spread out in their wake, fighting bitter actions against the Loyalist Army, as the Harbingers struck for the heart of Rechul. The Eagle Warriors followed on the third day, with battle still raging through the great boulevards of Rechul. Xiutel led his forces to districts where Loyalist resistance was stiffest. The vast depots below the city held hundreds of tanks, and they had been emptied as the battle wore, allowing the infantry to dig in. The Legio Telesto, after their duel with Destructor, had withdrawn for field repairs, taking much of House Rakham with them. Among the fallen machines they left the Warlord Titan Tonitruam lifeless and slumped against an arch, its carapace holed in a dozen places by Baneblade and Shadowswords. In the Titans' absence, even the Rakurai and Akiran taghmata struggled to make headway against their dug-in enemies. Xiutel broke that impasse with the Legio Suturvora and three super-heavy squadrons before sending breacher-led companies into the catacombs where the last platoons held out. In the spires, where Athrawes pressed the attack, armoured warfare had given way to murderous infantry actions. The Fire Keepers had made their presence known on the second, backed by twenty thousand of their Ebedsakar serf-soldiers. The latter were, like the bonded auxiliaries of any Legion, armed and trained to the highest standards of the Imperium’s mortal soldiers, and entrenched in the very heart of the fortress alongside their transhuman masters. Athrawes responded with imposing Thanatar and Castellax automata. Towering above these giants were the Knights of House Rakham, who met the cries of the defenders with their ancient battle cries. Sigurd’s defenders had brought down a great many foes, but against this threat even their Dreadnoughts could not prevail, battered and torn down by the huge walkers as Athrawes’ elite companies surged up behind the Knights and robots. Sigurd himself was lost in the inferno, last seen plunging into the ranks of the Harbingers at the head of his command squad. The remnants of his force were dismembered by Athrawes, who cut his way into the command spire with his retinue of Oni blademasters. With his victory, strategic control of the Commena Cluster was wrenched from the hands of the Loyalists. Category:C Category:Sectors